Thirty
by Lanoire
Summary: Bossuet and Grantaire dread turning thirty, Courfeyrac, Jehan and Combeferre dread University finals. The REAL reason they decided to build a barricade.
1. Chapter 1

Grantaire shuffled into the café, half hung over and half freshly inebriated, to see Bossuet sitting alone at a table looking very depressed. Grantaire hardly recognized the eagle of Meaux without his general cheerful expression and little doctor companion.

"Where is your little pet _malade imaginare_?" he asked, dragging a chair from one of the other tables then flopping down in it. "The two of you seemed quite joined at the lip-- hip, as of late."

"We are on the brink of a tragedy, _mon ami_," Bossuet said, running a hand over his head as if to smooth back hair that was not present. "Do you know the date?"

"Why do you ask that question?"

"Yes, forgive me. When have you ever known the date in your life? Today, my friend, is the first of June."

"Ah, June," Grantaire said, reaching for the center of the table and seeming surprised when there was not a wine bottle within reach. "A month for lovers." He paused. "But you _have_ a lover. Two, in fact."

"It's got nothing to do with love," Bossuet said, waving the question aside with a large hand. "The issue here is that in a week, _mon ami_, it is my birthday."

"Congrats."

"I am to be _thirty._"

"…shall I get you a cane, then, old man, or perhaps a pair of spectacles?" Grantaire asked, grinning widely.

"We are the same age. _You_ are to be thirty."

"…damn."

"Our youth is gone!" Bossuet cried melodramatically. "No more are we lazy youths, but grown loafers! Bums! We are not rebels, but madmen! Not students, but beggars! I go from a clumsy boy to a reckless man, you from an aimless youth to a worthless sot."

"In the opinion of most, I was the latter already," Grantaire pointed out, his craving for strong alcohol growing. "But now I will have the age to match it. Time has run out for us, my eagle. We can no longer delay. We are to be worthless forever, without the folly of youth on which to blame it."

"What will we _do_?" Bossuet asked, sounding genuinely distressed. The man's low spirits appeared to be infectious, and Grantaire felt his mood slowly plummeting.

"Get drunk," Grantaire replied immediately, opening his mouth to bellow for Louison.

"But even if we stay drunk for a week straight, we shall still have to wake on the seventh day to being thirty."

"Half of sixty," Grantaire muttered. "Half of… _old._" He was rather too sober to be eloquent.

"We must think," Bossuet said. "We could lie about our ages, but Joly knows mine."

"The window's not high enough," Grantaire noted.

"No, no," Bossuet said. "Enjolras would kill us if we died before--"

He broke off abruptly, and the two men exchanged a look.

"General Lamarque's funeral…!"

"It's on the fifth, that's two days before…!"

At that moment, Enjolras entered the café. Bossuet leapt to his feet and raced to the younger man's side.

"_Mon ami!_" he cried, slinging an arm around the blond boy's shoulders. Enjolras looked rather startled. "I've a brilliant idea, absolutely brilliant."

"Have you?" Enjolras asked, trying not to sound completely skeptical. Bossuet nodded and led Enjolras over to the table he and Grantaire had been sharing.

"It's the most brilliant idea you've ever heard," Bossuet said, pausing dramatically before going on. "On the day of the funeral… we shall stage an insurrection!"

"We shall what?" Enjolras asked, clearly expecting Bossuet's brilliant idea to have been anything save that.

"An insurrection! A rebellion! We'll… we'll…"

"We'll build a big barricade across the whole street!" Grantaire cried, flinging his arms out wide. Both men stared, then Bossuet slapped his leg enthusiastically.

"Genius! A barricade!" Bossuet cried.

"Yes… quite…" Enjolras said, too bewildered too protest.

"It will be perfect, _mon ami_, simply perfect. The people will be angered over the loss of their champion, they will turn formerly deaf ears to you! Grief will light fires in hearts that were once cold!"

"Yes… yes," Enjolras said with a nod, his own heart slowly warming to the idea. "The whole of the city will be in the streets, waiting for--"

"For us to spur them to action!" Bossuet cried, leaping gleefully to his feet.

"We must plan!" Enjolras cried, mimicking the motion and slamming his palm on the table. "L'aigle, you tell the others!"

As he turned and left, Bossuet sunk back into his seat, a contented smile on his face.

"This may be the best idea I have ever had."

"It is completely idiotic," Joly said. Bossuet, sitting Indian-style at the foot of the bed, tried to protest, but Joly held up a hand to silence him. "_Completely!_ Barricades are a leading cause of _death_ among impressionable rich young boys playing games, I hope you are aware!"

"I thought that was the pox."

"It is not, it is barricades!"

"Joly, _mon cher, _I don't believe you understand. I shall be thirty. My youth--!"

"So getting killed is your solution?"

"Absolutely!"

There was a lengthy pause, then Joly sighed.

"Well, I shall be dead of this fever before the week is out, anyway."

The rest of the Friends of the ABC proved much easier to convince, mostly because Bossuet somehow neglected to mention that the goal of the barricades would be to get him, Bossuet, and Grantaire killed before they turned thirty. He had somehow doubted that the idea would fly with the likes of Feuilly, who seemed quite attached to being alive, and Bahorel, who wanted to die in a blaze of glory, not because "two pansy students are afraid of turning twice fifteen." (As he had not been told, Bahorel never actually said this, but Bossuet imagined the true explanation would be greeted with a statement along similar lines, perhaps with a little more cursing and a few more skulls meeting the pavement.)

Of course, Grantaire drinking himself into a stupor had not been part of the plan. But each to his own, Bossuet supposed on the eve of June the fifth. There was always alcohol poisoning. As for him, well. This was clearly the best idea he had ever had.


	2. Finals

"...fuck."

"Language, Courfeyrac," Combeferre said, though the reprimand was only half-hearted. Combeferre was sitting at a paper and book strewn table, resting his chin in his hands. Courfeyrac, across from him, and flopped face-first onto a book, and would have appeared dead did he not occasionally swear. Jean Prouvaire, sitting between them, was hiding his face in his hands and weeping.

"I can't take this anymore," Combeferre said at last, pulling off his spectacles and rubbing his eyes. "I hate to sound the pessimist, but we can't do this. There is no way."

"We'll be kicked out of school!" Jehan sobbed. Courfeyrac threw a book at his head. It missed, but the little poet cried louder anyway.

"I'll never _graduate_," Courfeyrac said. "I don't want to be a lawyer, but I don't want to be a student forever, either."

"…I've never failed a final before," Combeferre said weakly. Slowly, all three heads hit the table, each with a thunk. Jehan burst into fresh tears and Courfeyrac let out a low moan.

"I hate school," Courfeyrac said, his voice slightly muffled by the fact that he was face-down on the table.

"It's not school," Combeferre argued. "It's this professor."

"If Combeferre doesn't understand it, it's impossible," Courfeyrac said with finality. "We should just skip."

"We can't skip!" Jehan squeaked. "We'd just fail anyway, with a zero! At least if we try we might scrape… an F…"

"I've never had an F," Combeferre said, suggesting by his tone that the notion was somewhere up there between being scalped alive and castrated with a rusty knife. Which was on fire.

"I'll be stuck in an endless litany of assignments and lectures and student dues _forever._ How in hell do you tell your whore she has to leave before ten so you can go to class, and please don't mind me, I'm just finishing up an essay, you keep on undressing!" Courfeyrac cried.

"There must be another solution," Combeferre said. "There _must_ be."

At that moment, Bossuet burst in. Granted, it was less bursting and more opening the door, tripping over the air, and tumbling in while nearly upsetting the table and all the papers on it. Combeferre sat up abruptly and put on his spectacles and Jehan wiped his eyes, leaving streaks of ink from his fingers across his face.

"What sends you in in such a rush?" Courfeyrac asked, not lifting his head from the table. Bossuet took a moment to catch his breath, then explained.

"General Lamarque's funeral! We're to stage an insurrection-- a barricade, across the whole street! A brilliant plan, for which I must claim a bit of credit."

"What?" Combeferre asked, startled. "They shall bring the police out on us."

"Worry not, my good philosopher!" Bossuet said, putting a large hand to his heart. "Do you really suppose our fearless leader would lead us to danger?"

The Eagle bounded out before any more questions could be asked and Combeferre slumped down in his seat, his mood doubly spoiled. Jehan looked worried.

"Damn it all," Combeferre said. "They will bring out the police, the government cannot afford even the smallest whisper of dissent. Police and guardsmen mean guns, which mean casualties, beyond a doubt."

"Deaths, likely," Jehan added miserably. Courfeyrac sat up like a shot.

"It's brilliant!" he cried, flinging his pen into the air.

"What is?" Jehan asked.

"This!" Courfeyrac cried, flailing. "It's the perfect way! Jehan won't be disgraced, Combeferre won't get an F, and I won't be stuck as a student forever! We'll go to the barricades!"

"But, at the barricades there will be--" Combeferre cut himself off, realization slowly dawning. "That is the most damnably idiotic…" he trailed off.

"It's quite poetic," Jehan said thoughtfully.

"Surely better to quite while you're ahead," Combeferre added. "The death of the young, even in such an uncivilized revolution as this is sure to be, has a greater impact than a man grown old who dies quietly."

"Think how great a night it'll be if I tell her I'm going to die the next day!" Courfeyrac whooped, punching the air with his fist. There was a pause. "…and I won't have to become a lawyer."

"I won't have to take my math final!"

"I won't have to besmirch my academic record!"

"Now," Courfeyrac said. "You cannot deny that I am brilliant."

"Yes, I can," Combeferre said. "But I will admit that the idea was rather clever."

"You know what this means we should do," Jehan said, sifting through the piles of notes, essays, and books. The other two students looked at him, and the small poet smiled angelically.

Combeferre supplied the matches.


End file.
